PAPAL MESSAGE TO MARIANISTS ON OCCASION OF GENERAL CHAPTER

VATICAN CITY, JUL 13, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was a Message from Pope John Paul to Fr. David Joseph Fleming, superior general of the Society of Mary, which is holding its 32nd General Chapter in Rome on the theme "Recreating with a new thrust the missionary project of our Founder." The Message for the July 8-29 meeting is dated July 7 and is written in English.

Recalling that he beatified Guillaume Joseph Chaminade, founder of the Marianists, during the Jubilee Year, the Pope notes that Blessed Chaminade "was born in troubled times as upheaval took hold of France; he was a man who lived through the tumult of the Revolution, preferring exile and the threat of death to the compromises forced upon the clergy at that time." And, writes the Pope, "he never failed to look to Mary as his hidden strength."

"Faced not only with revolutionary upheaval" and the "no less pernicious threat of religious indifference which eroded Christianity at its core," adds the Holy Father, "your Founder demonstrated qualities of apostolic imagination and daring which had their roots in genuine sanctity. ... Indeed in founding the Society of Mary, he wanted to offer to the de-christianized society of his time 'the spectacle of a people of saints'."

John Paul II then quotes Christ's words to Peter,"'Duc in altum! Put out into the deep'," saying they "echo down through the centuries." He reminds the Marianists that they are "the wonderful catch which resulted" when Fr. Chaminade cast out into the deep. "The waters of our own supposedly post-Christian time may seem to have nothing to give. We live in a time when many people cry out for freedom, yet resist the truth; they doubt not only faith but even reason itself; they insist upon rights, yet evade responsibilities; they yearn for fulfillment, yet balk at love. Into such seemingly uncompromising waters you must cast your nets as sons of Blessed Guillaume Joseph Chaminade, knowing that Jesus alone can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart."

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